Re: [Haskell-beginners] Chessboard Module, opinions on…

[iæfai]

If I may be so bold, this project is much more interesting than you  
might suspect.

This is of course only the first part, but the next step is to have an  
opengl display (I hope to get something running on mac and windows)  
going and it must support opengl 1.4 due to some limitations I have.

The chess AI process is something I still have to hunt for mind you,  
but the part that is the most interesting is that I am going to be  
controlling a $50,000 robot with this in class :P.

This robot is a CRS-3000 I believe, it looks something like this: http://www.phym.sdu.edu.cn/rolf/image/arm_overview.jpg 
  and it is picking up real chess pieces at the direction of the user  
on screen. The communication with the robot is going to be over the  
serial port.

An interesting problem related to this is communication, luckily I  
have tested a serial port library that does work on windows with ghc.  
I will probably implement a program on the robot's 486 controller to  
instruct the robot on what to do specifically.

My next step that could definitely use some direction would be the  
display part. I am limited to using power of 2 textures due to some  
unfortunate limitations on the machines I have available. I am  
thinking about this from a layered display approach. So I would be  
able to have a layer that would be the chess board with some  
interaction. Another layer would help calibrate the robot positions  
(luckily I am using only 4 and interpolating the rest - I figured out  
how to do that with some effort on Friday).

I would probably start using glut for this, and hack together  
something, but I would imagine what I am speaking of would benefit  
very much from some of what haskell can do. There might even be a  
library that already exists that I might not have found yet.

- iæfai

On 2009-10-28, at 2:11 AM, Joe Fredette wrote:

> Awesome, have you cabal-ized it? If not, it's pretty simple (look up  
> 'cabal' on the haskellwiki). Then you can upload it to hackage to be  
> toyed with.
>
> One thing that might be a cool direction to go w/ your project  
> (sounds like you intend to make a chess playing program, this is  
> somewhat orthogonal to that goal) is to build a "playback" machine.  
> For instance, I play chess with people by email on a fairly regular  
> basis. Specifically, we submit moves to one another in semi-standard 
> [1] algebraic chess notation. So I might see a game like:
>
>
> 1. Kb3 e5
> 2. d3  d6
> ...
> n. a4->a5 e6->d7
>
> Where the first move is White, moving his knight to B-3, then black  
> moves his pawn from e7 to e5. etc.
> a move followed by a * is a check, followed by two stars is a mate.  
> etc. You can poke at the wiki page for ACN for the appropriate  
> syntax. My suggestion is that- often times we go many days in  
> between moves, and so I don't keep track (in my head) of the last  
> few moves he made, which can sometimes indicate weak points/general  
> strategies. It would be _really_ nice to be able to replay old board  
> positions at will, given this ACN notation of the game. Might be a  
> nice (simple) use case for Parsec, and I imagine that most chess  
> engines will have something like that (assuming they operate on  
> STDIN/OUT) -- even if the syntax may be different. This will give  
> you the "backend" to plug it onto anyway.
>
> Anywho, good luck with your project, it looks nice!
>
> /Joe
>
> PS, Just noticed the little function you use to display the board  
> (and stuff). You may want to poke around the 2d Pretty printers on  
> hackage, they may make it easier/more extensible to render the  
> board. Also, `cout`? Someone's got a bit o' the ++ in 'em... :)
>
>
>
> [1] Okay, we mostly make it up, but it's _consistently_ arbitrary...
>
> On Oct 28, 2009, at 1:56 AM, iæfai wrote:
>
>>
>> I have just recently finished a 'ChessBoard' module that is meant  
>> to represent a chess board. I could use some opinions and/or  
>> suggestions on the module.
>>
>> To give an example of how this can be used right now, and was my  
>> immediate goal, you can do this:
>>
>> *ChessBoard> putStr $ cout defaultBoard
>> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>> | RB | NB | BB | QB | KB | BB | NB | RB |
>> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>> | PB | PB | PB | PB | PB | PB | PB | PB |
>> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>> |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
>> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>> |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
>> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>> |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
>> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>> |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |
>> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>> | PW | PW | PW | PW | PW | PW | PW | PW |
>> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>> | RW | NW | BW | QW | KW | BW | NW | RW |
>> +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
>>
>> I have not determined exactly how I will be making moves, but the  
>> logic will not be in my program. I am going to be using a chess  
>> engine in another process (I haven't chosen a chess engine yet that  
>> works on both windows and mac through stdin/stdout).
>>
>> The module itself follows, I appreciate any thoughts you might have.
>>
>>
>> module ChessBoard where
>>
>> import Data.Sequence
>> import Data.Foldable
>> import Data.Maybe
>> import Data.List as List
>>
>> class NiceLook a where
>>   cout :: a -> String
>>
>>
>> data Piece = Bishop | Rook | Knight | King | Queen | Pawn | NoPiece
>>   deriving (Show, Eq)
>>
>> instance NiceLook Piece where
>>       cout Bishop = "B"
>>       cout Rook   = "R"
>>       cout Knight = "N"
>>       cout Queen  = "Q"
>>       cout Pawn   = "P"
>>       cout King   = "K"
>>       cout _      = " "
>>
>> data Colour = Black | White | NoColour
>>   deriving (Show, Eq)
>>
>> instance NiceLook Colour where
>>       cout Black = "B"
>>       cout White = "W"
>>       cout NoColour = " "
>>
>>       -- error "..." might be useful
>>
>> data Square = Square Piece Colour
>>   deriving (Show, Eq)
>>
>> instance NiceLook (Square) where
>>       cout (Square p c) = (cout p) ++ (cout c)
>>
>> data Row = Row (Seq Square)
>>   deriving (Show, Eq)
>>
>> instance NiceLook (Row) where
>>       cout (Row s) = "|" ++ foldMap (\x -> " " ++ cout x ++ " |")  
>> s       -- thnx Saizan
>>
>> makeRow n = case (List.length n) of
>>               8 -> Row (fromList n)
>>               _ -> error "Row is not 8 squares"
>>
>> makeColouredSquares n c = makeRow $ map makeSquare (zip n  
>> (replicate 8 c))
>>
>> makeSquare (n,c) = Square n c
>>
>> pawns = [Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn, Pawn]
>> back = [Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King, Bishop, Knight, Rook]
>> blank = [NoPiece, NoPiece, NoPiece, NoPiece, NoPiece, NoPiece,  
>> NoPiece, NoPiece]
>>
>> data Board = Board (Seq Row)
>>   deriving (Show, Eq)
>>
>> instance NiceLook (Board) where
>>   cout (Board c) = borderOutput ++ "\n" ++ (foldMap (\x -> cout x + 
>> + "\n" ++ borderOutput ++ "\n") c)
>>
>> defaultBoard = Board (makeColouredSquares back Black <|
>>                     makeColouredSquares pawns Black <|
>>                     makeColouredSquares blank NoColour <|
>>                     makeColouredSquares blank NoColour <|
>>                     makeColouredSquares blank NoColour <|
>>                     makeColouredSquares blank NoColour <|
>>                     makeColouredSquares pawns White <|
>>                     makeColouredSquares back White <| empty)
>>
>>
>> borderOutput = "+" ++ (List.foldr1 (++) $ replicate 8 "----+")
>>
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